Ahh, cover letters, herald of the short story submission. The importance of cover letters tends to depend on who you ask. Some editors say they’re meaningless, others have been known to reject stories outright on the basis of a poor one. I like to try and please both camps, by writing short, punchy missives that state my intentions plainly and do not describe the story in any detail (one thing almost all editors seem to agree on is that any kind of plot summary —especially the “My story is Valley of the Dolls meets The Ring ” variety — is bad form).

I stumbled upon a wry article on submissions that some writers will appreciate, while others (the overly sensitive artistes, mostly) may not. Mostly because the author of the article is very sarcastic and focuses on the things writers do wrong. But it’s a great time-saving piece for those writers who see the cover letter as a conduit to talk personally with the editor (it’s not), and it’s good for a laugh.

I was amused to see that one of the things a writer should not do in a cover letter is to mention their membership in either SFWA or HWA. The author of the article refers to those writers as desperate egomaniacs.

I’d never really thought about it that deeply, but it’s actually kind of true. After all, why would a writer include such irrelevant information on a cover letter unless he wanted some kind of special treatment? Because, really, should an editor care if a writer is a member of SFWA or HWA or any other writer’s club? I don’t think so.

The converse is also true. I would never submit a story to a magazine that gave special consideration to members of HWA or SFWA. It’s certainly not the kind of behavior one sees in the professional presses. I’ve never read the bio of a mass-market novelist who included among his credits membership in either SFWA or HWA. Most readers I asked told me they don’t read the author’s bios at all, but if they did the only things they’d be interested in would be previous publishing credits and any awards the author won. Most readers don’t care if a writer is a member of a writer group or if they were a runner-up in some contest or had received “honorable mention” in another. Nobody cares.

I think writers who mention in cover letters that they are members of HWA or SFWA are more interested in projecting themselves as writers than they are in the act of writing itself. Being a member doesn’t give one any special privileges in the publishing world, nor does membership provide any reflection on one’s own writing ability.

Better to keep those cover letters simple and let the story speak for itself.

Ian

Note: Not to pick on those particularly bad writers out there, but do you recall the short story I critiqued a few days ago? Well, I happened to read the author’s bio at the back of the book just the other day, and wouldn’t you know it … "[Name deleted] is an active member of both SFWA and HWA and has received numerous Honorable Mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror." Both SFWA and HWA credits and honorable mentions. Wow. I almost feel bad. Like shooting bad writers in a barrel.

New links: Cover Letters: When, Why, and How to Use Them, Sweeping Back the Slushpile: A First Reader’s Primer.

Received a new rejection the other day from a new market I was trying out, Zahir. Not a professional market, but the mag looked half-decent and their website wasn’t atrocious, so I figured I’d toss them a bone. Alas, they did not bite. Turns out they don’t publish much horror. That’s fine by me; at least now I know.

While I search for another market to thrust "Charlotte’s Frequency" upon, I decided to try out another publication I haven’t submitted to before. This one is an e-zine, a type of publication which I almost never send to, mostly because e-zines are typically run by small-press amateurs who are publishing an e-zine because they have no knowledge of what it takes to put together a decent print magazine. Yes, there are a few good ones, but they serve only to prove the rule.

This one I’m submitting to is SCI FICTION, an electronic publication associated with the official website of the Sci-Fi Channel in the U.S. The fact that it’s affiliated with a TV station is probably the reason they can afford to pay 20¢/word for stories, which is far above the rates offered by most semi-professional and professional magazines. That they got Ellen Datlow, a well known editor of sf/fantasy, to run the thing is another selling point. I sent them “The Dark and the Young.” If they accepted it … well, 12,000 words at 20¢/word equals … ooh, baby.

I also re-wrote an old story, "Winter Hammock," and fired it off to the boys at Fantasy and Science Fiction.

That makes four stories I have out in the world, trying to find love and acceptance (but mostly acceptance). Working on two new stories at the moment, one short and one that is threatening to balloon in much the way "The Dark and the Young" did.

Damn novellas. They’re like furniture you don’t have room for in your apartment.

Ian

New links: SCI FICTION.

I’ve just finished reading my second Raymond Chandler novel and I continue to be impressed with his style and ability to hook the reader right from the beginning. I mean, every good book has its hook, but Chandler’s stories are like the literary equivalent of crystal meth.

I had really enjoyed The Big Sleep, Chandler’s first Philip Marlowe tale, and was pleased to find that the books seem to only get better. I’d always known that Chandler was a popular author, the one who pretty much defined (along with Dashiel Hammett) the hard-boiled detective genre which has spawn so many imitators throughout the years. And I knew I would get around to reading them eventually, but I never imagined they would be so damn good.

I won’t rehash the plots of The Big Sleep or Farwell, My Lovely, but I will say that if you haven’t read them yet, then you’re certainly missing out on an incredibly original writer. My only complaint is that he wrote only seven Marlowe novels. But then, maybe seven is enough (I think Jacqueline Susann said that). It’s a lucky number, and maybe any more than that would’ve been too many.

Here are some paricularly good excerpts from Farewell, My Lovely:

Twenty minutes’ sleep. Just a nice doze. In that time I had muffed a job and lost eight thousand dollars. Well, why not? In twenty minutes you can sink a battleship, down three or four planes, hold a double execution. You can die, get married, get fired and find a new job, have a tooth pulled, have your tonsils out. In twenty minutes you can even get up in the morning. You can get a glass of water at a night club — maybe.

Here’s another one:

I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.

And one more:

He stared at me and his left hand began to edge towards the gun. He belonged to the Wandering Hand Society. The girls would have had a time with him.

Simply brilliant. The High Window is next.

Ian

Today I finished reading the last story in Andrew Pyper’s collection Kiss Me. Pyper is the best-selling Canadian author of Lost Girls, a novel that has graced many top-ten lists and won many prestigious awards. Despite those things it’s actually a very good novel (a first novel, no less!). Canadian novels have a long history of being divided into two categories: those that win awards and those that sell well.

But Pyper manages to tell interesting and engaging stories without the amount of pretentious snobbery seen in fiction by other well-known Canadian authors like Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje. Pyper is telling stories with meaning, but he’s not harping on the depth of that meaning, and it never feels as though he’s talking down to the reader. And while Atwood and Ondaatje have the luxury of being known as literary authors, Pyper manages to produce stories of equal quality but maintain a much more humble position in the field. (This is not an easy feat for a man who once dated Leah McLaren, highly opinionated and much reviled columnist of The Globe and Mail.)

After reading Lost Girls, which tells the story of a drug-addicted defense attorney traveling to a small Northern Ontario town to defend a school teacher against a double-murder charge, I decided to read the rest of Pyper’s work. Lost Girls was one of the best books I’d read in years. Quick pacing, excellent characterization, and the one thing lacking in most fiction today: surprises. Set against a backdrop of urban legend and rural superstition, I highly recommend it.

Kiss Me is a collection of thirteen short stories that Pyper published in various Canadian literary magazines while he was working his way though law school. Pyper and I seem to share some common views on publishing, at least when it comes to the small press.

While Kiss Me was originally published by The Porcupine’s Quill (one of Canada’s better-known small presses), Pyper knew that Lost Girls was much too "big" for the small press. He ended up selling it to HarperCollins for a large advance, and the rest as they say is history. (Kiss Me was also picked up for mass-market production by HarperCollins after Lost Girls ended up selling so well.)

The stories are quite excellent, not just because Pyper writes about familiar locations (Toronto, Peterborough, and the plethora of small towns "north of 7"), but because he’s dealing with issues that another Canadian writer would doubtlessly execute in the artsy, incoherent fashion that has become almost cliche in this country’s literary fiction. His characters deal with drug addiction, sexual abuse, and other forms of social torture, but there is nary a Woe is me! to be found. And he never makes their pain look "literary cool."

Two stories involving writers, "If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now" and "The Author Shows a Little Kindness," also provide dutiful explorations of writers and their motivations without getting into the ethereal and redundant bullshit of authors attempting to define their art.

Pyper is anything but phony. He may in fact be one of the most honest Canadian writers publishing today.

Ian

In the past I have quoted writing which I have found to be clever or well-written. A friend recently asked me if I could give an example or two of writing which I have found to be exceptionally poor.

I don’t like to criticize other people’s writing openly, much less publicly, and I do so here only because I recently read a short story that, I feel, was poorly executed. It would be bad form to list the numerous problems I had with the tale, but I see no inherent harm in listing a couple of standard writing faux pas.

Since I’m not doing this to be mean, and I do consider the author’s feelings and the extremely slight chance that he/she might stumble upon this one day (yeah, right), I won’t mention the title of the story or the name of the author.

Today’s example is in improper word usage and context. In the following paragraph, two characters are studying photographs of cattle mutilations and trying to determine if the deaths were caused by a bacterial disease (blackleg) or something else.

The fact that Saunders – the U. of Wyoming’s resident UFOlogist (and tenured Anthropology prof) – knew to ask about blackleg wasn’t a good sign. Like the gruesomely illustrated book before her, it meant he’d been doing his homework.

Now, if you look at the second sentence, one assumes the writer is trying to suggest that the pictures of the cattle mutilations are gruesome. But because the writer has misused the descriptive adverb gruesomely, what they’ve actually said is that the illustrations themselves have been gruesomely illustrated. A better way of writing this sentence would have been: Like the gruesome images in the book before her, it meant he’d been doing his homework.

The sentence itself is confusing. Saunders knows about blackleg, thus he’s been doing his homework. What does the book have to do with that? That he chose to employ a book on cattle mutilations to investigate cattle mutilations is a sign he’s doing his homework? Sounds like a fairly obvious move to me. After all, one doesn’t pick up a geometry text to find out who won the Punic Wars.

And if we want to look at the story elements of the preceding piece, I can tell you that I’ve never heard of any university in the U.S. (or anywhere else, for that matter) having a “resident UFOlogist.” Some universities offer courses in parapsychology, but only one Ph. D in Parapsychology has ever been given out (to Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove in 1980). But then they hide information like that in books.

The preceding example is only the second paragraph of the short story, and I can tell you it doesn’t get much better from there. On the plus side, that such a story can get published in the first place makes me feel that much better about my own chances. (I think poorly written stories serve that one purpose, if no other: to bolster the confidence of other struggling writers who read them and say, Damn, I can write better than this!)

Improper word usage (an adverb, in this case) may seem like small bananas, but like most things in life, it’s the little things that matter. Poor writing and lazy research can eclipse good storytelling. Some writers make foolish assumptions about things they know little about, while others can’t be bothered to do even the smallest amount of research. (I recently read a short story where a professor giving a lecture on urban mythology shows slides on a film projector.) For example, some writers forget that words like Coke, Kleenex, and Popsicle are all products and therefore need to be capitalized.

I was once chastised by a writer on a message board for my insistence on these finer points. I don’t worry about those things, this person told me, I’m more concerned with a little thing called Story. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Ha-ha, good one. He got me there, did

n’t he?

Well, in my opinion, when a writer can’t be bothered to find out whether or not Twinkie needs to be capitalized, or how to properly spell Microsoft PowerPoint (one word, not two, with a medial capital P), what they’re really doing is disrespecting their story. They’re saying it’s not worth the time to look it up and find out which way is right. Anything worth doing is worth doing right, and that’s especially true of writing.

People may not like all of the stories I write in my career, but I can live with that. I think it would be much worse to be considered a lazy writer.

Ian

Ever since I bought Centipede Press’s oversized edition of Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot, I have discovered just how beautiful books can be. Story is paramount, but there’s still something to be said for the truly gorgeous limited editions being produced today.

I’m not one to brag about the things that I own. I sometimes come upon websites of people who post their collections of books or DVDs, and I can think of no reason to reveal such information except to say, Hey look at all the cool stuff I own! But, after receiving some good news at work — which, in one of those serendipitous coincidences, arrived at the same time "The Tattletail" was accepted for publication — I decided to spend a bit of money and pick up a few of the limited editions I had been longing for.

It’s sort of a big deal to me because, as any visitor to my apartment will attest, my book collection leans toward dog-eared, yellowing paperbacks and tattered hardcovers. I’ve never cared how a book looks, just so long as the story delivers. I still feel that way, but, again, there’s something to be said for dem purty limited editions.

To those of you who may not understand the concept, the best analogy I can come up with is that limited-edition novels are to books what special-edition DVDs are to movies. They offer the same entertainment, but with some additional goodies for the enthusiast.

So what kind of extra features can be found in a book? Well, let me show you some of the limited editions I’ve recently picked up.

Visitors to this site are aware of my appreciation for the work of Poppy Z. Brite. I not only enjoy Brite’s writing, but also her attitude on the publishing world and her need to swim away from the crowded sea of goth-vampire fiction to more original (and more mainstream) waters. A truly original writer.

Gauntlet Press celebrated the ten-year anniversary of Brite’s first novel, Lost Souls, with a numbered edition. This means only a certain number of copies were printed; each copy is numbered and signed by Brite. Of the 750 produced for this edition, I own No. 637.

The tenth-anniversary Lost Souls includes a bunch of goodies, including: a new foreword by Brite; two pages of the original typewritten draft; correspondence between Brite and the editor who bought the book; a "lost chapter" from an earlier draft; and the short story, "Stay Awake," which takes place the summer after the events in the novel.

I also picked up a pair of signed short-story collections by Brite. Are You Loathsome Tonight? has an introduction by Peter Straub (signed), an afterword by Caitlin R. Kiernan (signed), and is one of only 2000 copies produced. The Devil You Know is a signed hardcover edition of Brite’s most recent short-story collection, and features a novella which provides a lead-in to her recent novels Liquor and Prime . Both collections were produced by Subterranean Press.

Lost Souls, Are You Loathsome Tonight?, The Devil You Know
by Poppy Z. Brite

The other limited editions I picked up were a package set of The Talisman and Black House, by Stephen King and Peter Straub. Published by Grant Books (who published the original limited editions of King’s Dark Tower Cycle), the books are signed by Straub and Rick Berry (alas, no King siggy); the latter is the artist who painted the covers as well as the plates featured throughout both books. The design of the books is incredible and the artwork is first-rate. Only 3500 copies of this set were produced.

The Talisman and Black House, by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Books are certainly taking a cue from DVDs with the extra features available in some of these limited editions. It’s not a matter of people wanting more for their buck (although that is nice, too), but rather people wanting more of the books they love.

I can see how collecting limited-edition novels could become an addiction.

Better than heroin, I guess.

Ian

Received two items in the mail today: the anthology I was almost a part of, Horrors Beyond, and my first issue of Glimmer Train.

Horrors Beyond is a handsome-looking collection of stories whose theme is, more or less, supernatural horror and the technology that reveals them. It’s a little hard to look at this one and not think about how close I came to being a part of it. I’m not bitter, though; it’s not as if my story was rejected because it wasn’t good enough — that would’ve hurt more. But it’s still hard to look at such a fine book and not ruminate on what-if. But there will be other anthologies.

Glimmer Train is a literary magazine packed full of stories (250+ pages). A publication that shows how much it loves its writers. Each story is prefaced by a a short bio, and below the title and author is the author’s signature below (a small touch, but a nice one). Also, each issue concludes with a section called "The Last Pages," in which each author gets a page to discuss their work, inspirations, whatever. Very nice.

You could not find a more diverse collection of fiction than Horrors Beyond and Glimmer Train, but I like to think that having such varied tastes will help me to become a better writer. It’s also encouraging to see that the short story is still alive and kicking.

Ian

As I’ve mentioned before (ad nauseam, I’m sure), most of the visitors to this website are friends and family who have little understanding of the world of publishing. (No worries, folks, it’s a mostly dull business.) I tend to write as if I my audience were a group of fellow scribes, when, with the exception of one or two individuals, that is simply not the case.

So I decided to post a journal entry in response to comments from those of you who are unfamiliar with this oh-so-glamorous world. Those who don’t know the meaning of terms like slush pile or simultaneous submission, or the difference between a professional magazine and a semi-professional magazine. But mostly I want to state my position in the field, my goals for the future, and how I plan to achieve them.

One of the things that comes up most with people I talk to about writing are the magazines. Why do I send stories to some but not to others? What’s the difference between a professional magazine and semi-professional magazine?

In response to the latter question, the difference comes down to a matter of money. For example, magazines like Book of Dark Wisdom and Talebones are considered semi-professional because they pay less than $.03 a word. Magazines such as F&SF, McSweeney’s, and The New Yorker are considered professional because they pay more than $0.03 a word (natch). The number of times a magazine is published a year, as well as their circulation, also plays a factor.

Some of you have asked why I don’t send my stories to the bottom tier of the publishing market — the non-paying magazines. The standards are sometimes lower, thus the potential for acceptance is higher (which means more publishing credits, baby!). True, but I don’t write stories just so they can be accepted by magazines. I write stories because it’s something I love to do. I send them to magazines because I want others to read them.

So why do I ignore most of the small-press markets? Won’t those credits help me get the bigger-paying gigs? You might think so, but the truth is not so simple.

Some writers contend that publishing credits in the small press will help them toward a career in the big press. I disagree. If you are reallly serious about your craft and your aspirations to become a career novelist, you are better off applying your efforts to the big presses. There are a number of people – personalities, I guess you could call them – in small-press horror who have achieved a small degree of celebrity, at least among their peers, but you rarely if ever see them move on to lucrative careers in the big press. Either they’re just not good enough to ascend to that level or they have made the choice to remain in the small press. I imagine it’s usually a bit of both.

The temptation to work exclusively in the small press is undeniably strong. The standards of small-press editors are not always as strict as those of the big publishing houses, thus upping the chances of getting one’s stories accepted. This is what is known as the instant gratification factor. It is the reason why there is such a glut of small-press magazines and e-zines and print-on-demand (POD) publishers. Because the standards for acceptance are lower and it’s easier for the writer to say he is published! That he is now a novelist! Right. That’s like comparing the diary of Anne Frank and some twit’s Live Journal.

The rejection factor plays a part, too. Most writers publishing in the small press have dreams of making it big, but they just don’t have the guts to deal with the rejection from the bigger presses. It’s much easier to stay where they are, sending stories to the smaller, little-known ‘zines that are more likely to accept their work. This is especially true since the small-presses have formed online communities of writers who are networked and communicating regularly

via e-mail and blogs.

Some writers will say it’s okay to publish in the small press, that many of the big names started there, and I will not argue with that. It’s all on the record for anyone who wants to look it up.

But let’s take a look at those big names, shall we?

Writers like Stephen King, Peter Straub, and Poppy Z. Brite all started out publishing in the small press, but they didn’t stay there. They knew that in order to obtain a career in writing they had to move on to the bigger publishing houses. Oh sure, King published his Dark Tower Cycle with Grant Books, Straub releases limited editions through Borderlands, and Brite has some wonderful short-story collections available via Subterranean Press — but all that happened after they had established themselves in the field. (For the writing dilettantes, I should also mention that there is a major distinction between those small presses which are small because they produce quality limited editions by well-known writers and those small presses which are small because they are run by amateurs who have few resources and less experience.)

Anyone who believes they can make a career of writing in the small press is deluding themselves, and anyone who believes success in the small-press counts for anything in the big press is potentially setting themselves up for a very rude awakening later on. (I say "potentially" because there’s always one success story that proves the exception to the rule.)

Statements like the one above tend to provoke anger in some small-press horror writers. This is because a) they feel paternally/maternally protective of the small press; b) they agree with me but don’t want to admit that being published in the small press is probably the best they can do; or c) they just plain disagree with me.

Regardless of the reason, the anger is fine. I try to cover all the avenues of discussion in my rants and post all the pertinent caveats to stem the flow of angst-ridden vituperations, but part of having an opinion is dealing with those who disagree. Most visitors to this site (i.e. people that know me) know that I’m not trying to stir the pot (trolling, is the current internet idiom, I believe). They know that I’m speaking from a love of writing and a strong desire to be a career novelist. No offense is meant to the small-press or to the writers who trawl those waters.

The small-press horror community is not as a level that must be transcended on the way to success, but rather a path that some writers choose to take while others do not. Neither one is the right way. But having said that, I don’t believe anyone who says you need to start in the small press to become a successful novelist.

Will success in the small press help a writer’s career in the big press? Probably not – not enough to make it worth their while busting a gut to make a name for themselves there, anyway.

But what it really comes down to is the writer’s goals and convictions. What does the writer hope to get out of their writing? Entertaining a few friends or a lucrative career? To those who want the career, I would seriously suggest against working hard to become successful in the small press. If you really want a writing career, your time is better spent working on those who can give it to you (i.e. the big publishing houses). The small press is a warm, affable community, but it’s also a hall of mirrors in which one can become disoriented and distracted and, sometimes, lost forever.

There are enough distractions in life; try to avoid them in your writing.

Ian